Auction Process
Sotheby’s auctions are usually held during the day. The majority are free and open to the public, with the exception of occasional evening auctions that require tickets. All attendees have no obligation to bid. When an auction takes place, Sotheby’s auctioneers begin the sale by describing the item in house and announcing the beginning price that is lower than its reserve price. The bid begins and is finished when a sole bidder remains willing to purchase the lot at the bidder’s declared price. The auctioneer “knocks down” the lot, declaring it sold to the winning bidder. The winning bid for a lot is also called the hammer price. Sotheby’s organizes the delivery of the lot in private with the buyer.
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Famous quotes containing the words auction and/or process:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“come peace or war, the progress of America and Europe
Becomes a long process of deterioration—”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)